


Unfinished Business

by Metallic_Sweet



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dimiclaude Week (Fire Emblem), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, First Meetings, Letters, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Politics, Post-War, Succession Crisis, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22103293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metallic_Sweet/pseuds/Metallic_Sweet
Summary: Claude ascends to the throne of Almyra. Dimitri is the King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the united Fódlan.This is the end to one story and the beginning of another.(For DimiClaude Week 2020, Day 2: Firsts/Lasts)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 15
Kudos: 142





	Unfinished Business

**0\. when we first met / I was young and you were, too**

“It is silly, perhaps,” Claude says as Lorenz measures tea, “but I regret not finishing my education.” 

Lorenz pauses, the scoop still in the canister of Almyran Pine that Claude had brought as a gift. He peers at Claude in the late afternoon sunlight. The room of the inn is comfortable, if a little limited in space. 

“Somehow, I didn’t expect that from you,” he says, turning his attention back to the tea and scooping the dried leaves and needles into the travel teapot. 

“I am a bit surprised myself,” Claude admits, watching Lorenz set the canister and scoop down and reach for the pitcher of hot water. “Lately, I feel as if it is unfinished business. We were all only a few months from graduating.” 

“When you put it that way,” Lorenz says, concentrating on pouring the water, “I share your sentiment. Those days were…”

He falls silent. Claude nods. 

They both do not need to speak further.

**i. we wouldn’t have known love / if it struck us in the face**

In the years immediately following the war, Claude formally gave up his title as Duke Riegan and ascended to the throne of Almyra. 

It was time. The Alliance was in poor condition following the war, and holding onto House Riegan would have made for unnecessary political attrition. He stayed involved enough to make sure that the House staff were taken care of and to implore Dimitri and Byleth via messenger to turn the Riegan properties into places to serve the people. Dimitri wrote him a message personally in response, thanking him for his support and his thoughtful management. He wished Claude well in Almyra and asked nothing more. 

It was incredibly sincere and polite. So much so that Claude, already knee-deep in his second succession crisis, couldn’t help but feel oddly nostalgic for Fódlan and Dimitri in particular. His parents and Hilda were his close allies as always, but his ascension to the throne of Almyra was not nearly as simple as being the forgotten grandson of the forgotten daughter of the former Duke Riegan. The court of Almyra knew exactly who Claude was but not who he had grown to be across the Throat. 

“It will take some time,” his father said, and this knowledge was the reason for his abdication much earlier than any of the court or public had predicted. “You are a new King, and you will have to fight this battle as such.” 

Claude nodded. After all, his father was right. They didn’t see eye to eye on many things, but that was precisely why he agreed. His father and his mother had taught him how to weather the world like this even in his earliest days when the cruelties of others judgement still pained him.

But it was hard. Claude had been away for almost a decade, and the court had last seen him as an awkward teenager whose voice hadn’t yet broken. He returned a man, not as tall as his father nor his mother, who had a bowmaster’s calluses and scars and could wield Fódlan magic when not on wyvern back. They viewed him with suspicion and thinly veiled fear. 

So, Claude began to write Dimitri. Short, personal letters. He wrote at first simply well-wishes. He wrote he hoped the harvests went well. That the plague would not be so harsh this year. That perhaps the brewing war between Brigid and Dadga would not last too long. Claude put ink to paper and didn’t think too deeply about it while his parents and Hilda watched for assassins and tasted everything Claude was to eat and drink. 

Dimitri wrote back, usually longer, and talked about all manner of things. He wrote about Byleth and the slow rebuilding of Garreg Mach. He wrote about the Faerghus winter and going north to Gautier to fight an unusually enthusiastic invasion attempt from Sreng. But he wrote most often about the public schools that the Riegan properties had been converted into, detailing how reading and writing were taught as well as how the former House seat was now an orphanage managed in part by Marianne. 

Hilda loved the letters, too, so she began to add to Claude’s responses by sending embroidered charms and pins for the children. In response, Dimitri wrote yet another of his detailed, sincere gratitudes and sent along pencil and charcoal drawings from the children, which delighted Claude as well as Hilda. Slowly, Claude’s short, insubstantial letters became packages, thick with Hilda’s enthusiastic gifts. As the succession crisis tapered off, he began to send Almyran Pine Needles, remembering the high cost in the markets. Dimitri thanked him for it and promised to share, sending along an entire round of Gautier cheese. 

_I remember you and Hilda liked this,_ he wrote in his fine script. _I hope you are well._

“Are you creating a subcategory of soft diplomacy?” Claude’s mother asked, half-amused as Hilda sawed the cheese round open. 

“Cheese diplomacy has a ring to it,” Claude said, too eager to eat a piece to think of the ramifications of the statement. 

His mother laughed. 

This was how Claude realised he had made a grave mistake. 

**ii. but now / as I grow older and wiser**

It is nearly a decade on from the war and exactly nine years since Claude’s ascension that he returns to Fódlan. 

It is a tour of land and natural splendor, covering the Alliance, Garreg Mach, and a visit to Fhirdiad. The first visit of a ruling foreign dignitary to the United Fódlan, and the first time any dignitary of Almyra has arrived in peacetime. That it is Claude, who was the last Duke Riegan, and who left his ancestral claim to let the unification occur is just another part of the weight of the visit. 

So, of course it is Lorenz, newly Count Gloucester, and Holst, less newly Duke Goneril, who greet Claude on the Fódlan side of the Throat. 

“You look well,” Lorenz says after the formality of greets has passed and Hilda and Holst aren’t crying quite so loudly. 

“You,” Claude said, and he couldn’t help but linger on the grey already growing into Lorenz’s hair and the faint splatter of plague scars on his exposed skin, “look like you have had a hard time.” 

“At least I didn’t have a six year succession crisis,” Lorenz says, very primly but not without a slight light of humour to his eyes. 

Over the next week, Lorenz helps lead the tour of the former Alliance. Claude visits the former Riegan properties and greets the children, teachers, and students as the King of Almyra. Most do not recognise him in his finery and astride an equally decorated wyvern. A few of the teachers and two of the older students do, but they do not say or do anything aside from act polite and, in the case of one of the teachers, a little fearful of the wyvern. Hilda showers the children and young students in her handicrafts, and that goes over better than any speech Claude makes.

Marianne rides down from Edmund to have dinner with Claude, Lorenz, and Hilda on the evening before Claude is set to meet with Dimitri and Byleth at Garreg Mach. She has grown taller to both Claude and Hilda’s surprise and does not ride Dorte, which is a surprise to everyone. 

“Dorte is getting up in age,” Marianne laughs when Hilda exclaims on that. “This is Irma.”

“She isn’t of Edmund stock,” Lorenz says, seemingly alarmed by this. 

“Oh! No,” Marianne says, and she smiles fondly at Irma in a manner that communicates far more than her otherwise simple words, “she is one of Ferdinand’s.” 

“ _Oh_ ,” Hilda says, looking as if she would like nothing more than to grab Marianne and wring her out for all the details.

“I didn’t know Ferdinand has taken up horse husbandry,” Lorenz says, completely not reading the atmosphere and instead looking faintly offended to be left out of a different loop. “He made no mention of it when we met for tea in –”

“How about we go inside?” Claude says because Hilda is shooting a glare of absolute murder at Lorenz and Marianne is starting to look embarrassed. “I don’t want dinner to get cold.” 

It turns out that Marianne and Ferdinand are not courting. Instead, Ferdinand and Petra are formally courting, a slow but foreseen process from what Claude himself had gathered from reports on Brigid and Dimitri’s letters. What is a surprise is Raphael and Leonie are apparently living together and that Caspar had, a couple years ago, somehow convinced Linhardt to go on an adventure with him. 

“I have no idea where they are right now,” Marianne says as both Hilda and Claude attempt to recover from the shock, “but Ignatz would probably know. He travels a lot now; his painting is really catching on.” 

It is a wonderful evening. Claude takes no small pleasure in being able to eat and drink without having to check for poison. They retire long past the moon’s rise, Hilda laughing they’ll struggle in the morning. Claude laughs along as they all head to bed. 

He doesn’t sleep at all that night, though. 

Instead, he sits up, idly rubbing the rough edges of his bowmasters calluses, and watches the moon crest until the sun fills its place. 

**iii. I wonder if / this is how fate works**

The last time Claude saw Dimitri was during the war. 

It was not how he had wanted their relationship to go. Back in their academy days, Dimitri and Claude had shared very little in common. Outside of their duties as House leaders and heirs to their respective Houses, they were very different. Claude had wanted Dimitri to loosen up, but Dimitri had wanted the exact opposite. They had worked well together, but the bridge couldn’t be crossed. 

When they met again, Claude learned exactly why Dimitri had once so viciously strangled his own individualism. The furious, roaring, blood-soaked figure at Gronder was barely recognisable as the same Dimitri from their academy days. Claude believes he hid how unsettled he was by the change, but it was also not surprising. He doesn’t know what Dimitri had to do to survive for five years as a hunted man branded as a traitor, and he senses Dimitri will never share the extent of that with any living soul. 

The last time they met, Claude had already closed down his House’s operations and Hilda was tugging on his elbow to get them to the ship heading to Almyra in time. Dimitri looked marginally better than he had at Gronder, but that wasn’t saying much. Byleth did most of the meaningful talking, and a part of Claude that will always be the boy who dreamed of uniting Fódlan ached as he handed them Failnaught. But he laughed it off and waved good-bye, and that should have been that. 

Their firsts and lasts: at the edge of their respective worlds. 

Life is never this simple. 

They live. 

**iv. when we meet again / we will be older and wiser both**

It is a beautiful morning as they ride up the mountains to Garreg Mach. 

“Repairs have been slow,” Lorenz says as the broken spires come into view. “Many of the skilled craftsmen either died during the war or the plague.”

“Dimitri mentioned in his letters,” Claude says, although the sight of the broken Goddess Tower from their angle is still quite sobering.

“He’s so friendly in those letters,” Hilda says, and Claude deliberately does not look at her for her knowing tone. “But I guess that is what happens when you don’t have a long succession crisis.”

“Did you have trouble with message thieves?” Lorenz asks, quite scandalised.

“Spies,” Claude says, which draws an even more scandalised gasp from Lorenz. “Court politics.” 

Lorenz makes an extremely annoying _tsk_ but doesn’t press further. Claude cannot entirely hide his amusement, and Hilda doesn’t even try. They speak of lighter things, like the dinner the night before and the upcoming harvest moon. Marianne had left early in the morning due to the latter. With Margrave Edmund up in his years, Marianne is taking on more of his day to day duties, which has also split her attention from the orphanage and schools. 

“I am not sure who would be half as well suited,” Hilda says as Lorenz and Claude’s bannerman hail the outer gate of Garreg Mach. “Since Ferdinand is courting Petra, he probably doesn’t have time, and I know Ingrid probably cannot be spared since Dedue and Mercedes have now moved to Duscur.” 

Claude nods. He glances at her to find that she’s paying attention to the slow opening of the new heavy gates. Hilda, Claude noticed immediately upon their crossing the Throat, has brightened. The longer they have been back in Fódlan, the more Hilda acts and sounds like a much younger, happier version of herself. She has not been unhappy in Almyra, but she is his friend and ally, and he knows she has been very lonely. 

Hilda’s eyes widen. 

“Oh!” she says. 

Claude turns his attention back to the gate and immediately knows why. There are three figures riding out towards them. Byleth is immediately recognisable in the archbishop of the Church of Seiros finery and light green hair. Ingrid rides two paces behind and aloft on her pegasus to pass over the gate. And Dimitri –

“None of them are wearing armour!” Hilda says, very surprised. 

“Why would they?” Lorenz asks, turning his head around and frowning at both her and Claude. “We are not at war.” 

They are not. Claude moves his wyvern forward, past Lorenz and Hilda and his retinue, and dismounts. He takes his bow and arrows from his back and hooks them on his wyvern’s saddle and strides out to meet them, heedless of his bannerman’s and a couple other of his retinue’s shouts. 

“Dimitri!” he shouts as the three approach, and to see Dimitri with his hair neatly lifted from his face and his blue and silvers with his bare hands and unprotected chest is so heady Claude can hear how it stirs emotion in his call. “Byleth, Ingrid! Well-met!” 

“Well-met!” they echo as Dimitri and Byleth pull to a halt two horse widths away and Ingrid begins to land. 

They dismount. Dimitri is the first on his feet as easy and fluid as he was in their youth. Byleth takes a little longer due to the vestments of their position. Ingrid is last, keeping a short distance behind her king and archbishop. 

“Already causing trouble, I see,” Dimitri says to Claude as Lorenz, Hilda, and the retinue catch up, Claude’s bannerman with a clear look of concentration. 

“I am the very picture of innocence,” Claude says as he steps forward to clasp hands. 

“You are a picture,” Dimitri says, with a small, toothless smile that lights his eyes as he squeezes Claude’s hands a little too tight. 

“So are you,” Claude says, and he meant it be teasing, but it comes out matter of fact. “You look well.” 

He does. The eye-covering is clean, unlike the last time they saw each other, and the wolf pelt over his shoulders is also clean. His smell does not preceed him, and the shadow under his good eye is much fainter. Dimitri’s hands are solid, callused, and scarred, but so are Claude’s if for different weapons and reasons. It feels right somehow. 

They have met again as equals. 

“Hey,” Hilda’s voice filters in, “other people are here.”

Claude has the gracious delight of watching Dimitri turn the colour of a ripe peach. Claude himself feels warm, but he doesn’t colour like that. They let go of each other’s hands as Byleth laughs openly at them. Ingrid, her fist in front of her mouth, looks as if only a lifetime of knightly composure allows her to swallow her own laughter. 

“It has been some time,” Claude says, louder to carry. “I am glad to see you well.” 

“And I, you,” Dimitri says, low and absolutely honest in his pleased embarrassment. 

“Yes, yes,” Lorenz says, moving forward and making an ushering motion, “but we shouldn’t just stand out here; we are on a tight schedule. Let’s go before our Kings make further fools of themselves.”

“How rude!” Claude jests as Dimitri flushes the colour of summer berries. “Come, Dimitri, we don’t need this insult!”

He grasps Dimitri’s hand. After a moment, Dimitri’s fingers curl against Claude’s own. They are warm and strong and well-matched. 

They stride past their retinues, Byleth laughing at them merrily, and walk up the restored path to Garreg Mach.

**Author's Note:**

> Connect with me on [Twitter @Metallic_Sweet](https://twitter.com/Metallic_Sweet)


End file.
